Assignment 11

This was supposed to be an “I remember” poem.  He liked it, but says I need to tighten it up a bit…so I will!!!

               Lucia Beach Road


I remember running through the marshy field, next to the creek, scared to death of stepping in our version of quick sand, “honey pots.”

I remember the smooth, sand-like dirt road leading to my house and the lake-sized pot holes which were such fun to maneuver on a bicycle.

I remember my cousin giving me a ride on her mini motorbike, which ended with the haunting guilt that I had somehow caused her broken leg.

I remember lying on the bottom bunk and thinking I should cry upon the news of my much older cousin’s death; instead I pictured him washing ashore, and the boat he had slipped from in the dark of night.

I remember building our treehouse, and the fear of falling I felt at following the older girls up the first time.

I remember cutting a hole in my favorite green corduroys and hastily telling my mom the new phrase I had learned, “I did it on purpose.”

I remember the endless procession of beautiful summer days on which we, her 4 youngest granddaughters, would burst through her screen door and recite our favorite line, “Grammie, whadda you have to eat?”

I remember that it was always Kool Aid and something from Hostess.

I remember the pattern on her countertop, the cool clean feeling of her orderly house, bursting with knick knacks.

I remember the two attic bedrooms in that house, and the hours and hours of playing “college” up there.

I remember learning to spell “Afghanistan” in one of those deeply eaved rooms, and marveling over the number of afghans in my grandmother’s closet.

I remember the way the word “cousin” felt more like “sister”, and the slow dawning of a realization that it didn’t really mean the same to other people, that we were lucky.

I remember learning to ice skate, and the way the cold air sliced through my heavy layers and came out the other side, leaving me wondering why all the fuss.

I remember the Crab Girls, who picked out meat in the bleach-drenched fluorescent lit room in our basement.  

I remember their loud and misplaced laughter, and the wall of cooking crab that met my nose when I walked from that room to the one with the enormous black cooker.

I remember sorting crabs, and getting pinched; the big claws on a dark brown disc; my mother’s kind reminder that you must pick them up by the smallest leg.

I remember my fearless and gentle mother turning into a terrified and angry monster when that boy cousin ran toward her with snakes draping off him like streamers on a float.

I remember that harmless big grey house at the end of its long, straight driveway, perched in the middle of a field; and how fearfully we avoided it on Halloween and Girl Scout Cookie sales calls, somehow driven by a need for mystery in our quiet neighborhood.

I remember lying on our bellies, behind the short row of hedges and peering through binoculars, into the window of the neighbors across the street. I looked so hard for the stock pot and wondered how I could be missing it, and what the undertone of excitement and urgency was from the older kids.

I remember the quietness of that narrow, winding street, and how it was shattered by a plane crash once, a car crash twice.  

I remember riding our bikes to the tiny airport because it had vending machines, and was much closer than any store—our plan for evading kidnappers firmly in place.

I remember wishing I could live in a place with sidewalks and neighbors, like the kids on TV.

I remember sitting on the school bus, and singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” into the fogged up window, as we rounded the corner to cross the river, and thinking I might know something about Love at 6 years old.

I remember falling asleep on the top bunk, with a little silver ring with a puppy on it, securely on my finger and how I ached for it for days afterward when I woke to find it missing.

I remember the woods behind my school; that little alcove-like clearing, the delicate pink lady slipper growing in the shade of a mossy rock, and the tingly reverence I felt for that flower knowing it was illegal to pick one.